* Carefully scoop up glass fragments and powder using stiff paper or cardboard and place debris and paper/cardboard in a glass jar with a metal lid. If a glass jar is not available, use a sealable plastic bag. (NOTE: Since a plastic bag will not prevent the mercury vapor from escaping, remove the plastic bag(s) from the home after cleanup.)

* Use sticky tape, such as duct tape, to pick up any remaining small glass fragments and powder. Place the used tape in the glass jar or plastic bag.

* Wipe the area clean with damp paper towels or disposable wet wipes. Place the towels in the glass jar or plastic bag.

* Vacuuming of hard surfaces during cleanup is not recommended unless broken glass remains after all other cleanup steps have been taken. (NOTE: It is possible that vacuuming could spread mercury containing powder or mercury vapor, although available information on this problem is limited.) If vacuuming is needed to ensure removal of all broken glass, keep the following tips in mind: 1) Keep a window or door to the outdoors open; 2) Vacuum the area where the bulb was broken using the vacuum hose, if available; and 3) Remove the vacuum bag (or empty and wipe the canister) and seal the bag/vacuum debris, and any materials used to clean the vacuum, in a plastic bag.

* Promptly place all bulb debris and cleanup materials, including vacuum cleaner bags, outdoors in a trash container or protected area until materials can be disposed of properly.

* Check with your local or state government about disposal requirements in your area. Some states and communities require fluorescent bulbs (broken or unbroken) be taken to a local recycling center.

* Wash your hands with soap and water after disposing of the jars or plastic bags containing bulb debris and cleanup materials.

* Continue to air out the room where the bulb was broken and leave the AC system shut off, as practical, for several hours.

* The next several times you vacuum the rug or carpet, shut off the AC system if you have one, close the doors to other rooms, and open a window or door to the outside before vacuuming. Change the vacuum bag after each use in this area.

* After vacuuming is completed, keep the H&AC system shut off and the window or door to the outside open, as practical, for several hours.

First off, let's get one thing straight: She didn't go to jail for trying to get her kid into a better school. She went to jail for enrolling her kid fraudulently. She lied on an official document and signed her name. That's fraud. That's a crime. I won't condone it, no matter how sympathetic the cause. Which in this case ain't all that much, because after she lied to get her kids into the school, she lied to get them free school lunches, too.

Put a PB & J in a paper bag, woman. It ain't that hard.

But the funny thing is, this whole form kerfluffle is NOT that big of a deal to fix. If I know anything about bureaucrats, it's that they hate doing any more paperwork than they have to. I'm sure they wanted to just make this whole thing go away, because she played them for fools for 2 years - a bit embarrassing for the school. So I suspect that after they discovered the ruse, they called her in & told her she'd been caught. And I'll bet that if she'd just agreed to pull her kid out, never come back, and keep her mouth shut, the incident would've been forgotten.

So I'm thinking that after she got caught, she went off on some sort of Jerry-Springer, high-toned, wobbly-necked, don't-mess-wif-a-sister "I didn't do anything wrong" rant, and honked off the paper-pushers who were trying to be reasonable.

So they threw her fat, idiot, loud-mouth butt in jail.

Which serves her right.

Because lady, if you want your kid in a better district, then move there like everyone else.

And if you want to lie on forms, just shut up and take your medicine if you get caught.

But don't try to pull a scam, get busted, then proclaim that your noble cause absolves you of responsibility.

From an article on a dangerous new drug which is still being sold legally [emphasis mine]:

Sarah first bought the drug ten months ago after she read on an online forum that it could help with weight loss.[...]Within months of taking her first hit, their happy, healthy, newlywed daughter had become a paranoid, aggressive agoraphobic, insomniac. She dropped from a size 16 to a size six.

If the goal of the article was to frighten people away from using the drug, maybe they should've skipped the part about what a phenomal weight-loss product it is.

Sunday, January 16, 2011

On a personal note, I recently bought a Roomba, because I finally admitted to myself that the mere thought of vacuuming makes me feel almost as miserable as the actual act.

Happy to report that buying a Roomba was totally worth it.

The first thing I discovered was that it's impossible not to anthropomorphize a Roomba. Because of the semi-random, yet deliberate nature of the cleaning pattern, there's something oddly lifelike about it. And the way it goes into a spiral when it finds a pile of dirt makes it look like it's VERY happy to be doing its job. Sorta like the door in Hitchhiker's Guide. Finally, there's its quaint little habit of bumping into things like a nearsighted puppy. Just adorable.

Within a day, I'd decided to name it Thumper, and started referring to it as "he" (figure if it were a girl, it'd be more graceful).

Now I'm not sure exactly how labor-saving it is, because I have to set up the virtual walls to keep him out of certain rooms, and move some furniture & power cords out of the way, and push his little start button, and empty his little dust bucket, and clean the hair out of his brushes. But the good part is that these things only take a couple minutes. I can stand to think about vacuuming for a couple minutes.

And the other good part is that he happily cleans under furniture that I haven't moved for years and couldn't get a vacuum under if I wanted to. And I'd rather drop a bowling ball on my foot than fiddle with my vacuum's hose attachment, so that problem's gone, too.

Two cautionary bits before you run out & buy one. First, I went with a slightly pricier model just so I could have the self-docking charging station. But it turns out that I usually take Thumper from room to room & do one room at a time, so this feature wasn't really worth the cost in terms of added convenience. Second, it's only really useful if every room in your house can be temporarily depopulated. If someone is ALWAYS running around the kitchen or the living room, you might get sick of stepping around the little guy.

Anyway, this purchase started out as a long-shot. Figured it would probably just be an expensive toy that would - ironically - sit around gathering dust.

And yes, I'm dedicating this one to blogdaughter Tammi of Tammi's Trail, because I've met her, and - no kidding - she has this exact same magical power.

And to Writer/Director/Composer Kurt Kuenne: Wow. That is some of the best filmmaking I've ever seen. Not a single wasted shot, not a single unnecessary word of dialogue. Every tiny bit of everything either develops character or moves the plot.

If Hollywood tried to tell this story, it would be full of useless, boring parts that did nothing but pad the film out to the requisite 105 minutes.

The worst thing you write is better than the best thing you didn’t write.

For what it's worth.

My personal experience is that I have definitely been hestitant to post some things I've written, but after posting them, I've always gotten enough "I feel that way, too" comments to make me realize that posting was the right call.

Figure at least try it once. If it doesn't work out the way you hoped, don't do it again. If it does, well...

Ya know, the Daily Show crew makes this look effortless, like the material just writes itself. Kudos, though, to the unsung production team for taking the raw footage of this interview and editing it to add comedic timing elements that make it funny, while still honestly presenting what this short-bus bureaucrat actually said.

Giffords "had this coming" to the same degree that every public figure "has it coming" - not at all.

Sadly, though, it's not completely unforeseeable. The attention, publicity, adulation and press coverage that comes with having a high-profile job comes with a price. That price is that crazy people see you, obsess over you, and may decide for no good reason (since they're, you know, crazy) that YOU are the cause of their problems and must be removed.

Is the attention worth the risk? I don't know, ask John Lennon.

That's why I try to keep a low profile. For me, fame ain't worth the hate mail, the death threats, and the well-armed lunatics with mommy issues.

Friday, January 7, 2011

Via Hot Air, Vanity Fair says that it cost the Congress over a million bucks to read the Constitution because they were in session, but not working:

I took the total FY 2011 costs for House salaries and expenses and House office buildings, then added half the costs of joint House-Senate expenses, the CBO, the Capitol Police and the Capitol power plant. Then I divided that sum by 205, the number of days the House was in session last year, then divided again by 24 (the number of hours in a day) and multiplied by 3 (the estimated length in hours of members reading the Constitution).

Ok, fair enough.

But to make it even fairer, let's look at how much Congress SPENT last year (well over 3 trillion), and run the same process.

I get about $2.27 billion that DIDN'T get spent in those same 3 hours, so I think America got the long end of the stick on this one.